Of special note is the 5th paragraph where she basically shoots herself in the foot:

"Now I don't pretend to be a tech whiz by any means and I am sure I know absolutely nothing about how it all works and why, but the one thing I know for certain though is that music sounds better on vinyl."

It's an opinion piece, nothing more. Music sounds better in digital; the artist's work is not drowned out by vinyl surface noise. Your comment, ozmosis, pretty much sums up the counterargument. Well-put.

Indeed. An opinion of a person who grew up with vinyl. I grew up with CDs and learned to appreciate their clear sound (assuming adequate mastering and playback device), usability (instant track switching and restarting), and portability (a Discman is slightly easier to carry around than a turntable...). And I feel just like her when unpacking a newly bought CD and listening to it with my best pair of headphones.

I think your rant is a bit out of place here. It's just a column written by a woman -who usually writes fashion/gossip stuff- where she pretty much just says she likes the hiss and crackle of vinyl and the whole listening procedure.

It's not like she's saying vinyl has technical advantages in terms of audio transparency over digital reproduction.

As she admits she is not aware of the technical aspects behind the different formats, perhaps her statement is based on valid factors she does not understand enough to describe in her column. Old albums that she originally heard on vinyl are endlessly remastered and re-released on CD with differing and often catastrophic results. Given her admitted lack of technical expertise, she may well hear brickwalled or poorly mixed remasters of her favorite albums on CD, not like it as much as the vinyl she is used to hearing and assume it is a flaw with the compact disc format rather than the recording itself.

And I'm not just talking about the way it furiously (nearly) ruined the music industry facilitating the easy and rapid cloning of music by ways of CD burning hardware on computers to the detriment of artists getting royally ripped off.

I´m sick of hearing this argument. This woman swallowed the exaggerations of the industry wholeheartedly and simply ignores decades of copying vinyl onto compact cassettes, elcassette and open reel. Articles like that should be forbidden...

QUOTE

But for the audiophile purists, that certainly was a very small price to pay to get that one of a kind sense of intimacy, closeness and warmth that only phonograph records deliver.

IMO, "audiophile" and "vinyl" don´t go very well together...

All in all, she can rant and have her opinion as desperate as she wants but she cannot change the reality that most people will always go for convenience anyway - which means CD and mp3. Her whole article is from the opinion of "those good old times" but she fails to see that the old times weren´t better, only different.

I believe, that what she's referring to, is the romantic value to playing records. The clicks and pops of the record, actually adds to the experience of listening to records.

Digital music (no matter what physical media it is on), is clean and sterile. I believe this is why she claims that vinyl sounds "better" (except if they're encoded badly. Then, they're just digital junk).

I's like saying a printed book is "better" than eBooks. The advocacy for Vinyl is quite similar to that of reel-to-reel tape. I'd even argue, that the open reel advocacy is even more militaristic, since it is of audiophile, high quality and doesn't introduce the clicks and pops of vinyl. At the same time, the machinery looked awesome, with large tape wheels spinning on the machine.I like vinyl as well. But I'd never claim we should go back to them.

It's like having a vintage motorcycle in the garage that you take for a ride on a nice Sunday.

This might me slightly off-topic, but I'm wondering: Is it possible to have once own recording on Vinyl?As in: Can I submit my own audio and get my own recorded vinyl?

Sure, just find a mastering house that has a lathe, submit the songs you want cut as WAVs on a CD-R, and tell them you want a "flat transfer", i.e. no mastering per se, just whatever tweaks they need to do to prepare it for cutting to vinyl.

It would probably run you a few hundred dollars just to get a test pressing of one record, but hey, there have been plenty of vanity songs/albums made over the years (Rebecca Black's "Friday" being one of the most (in)famous, certainly as of late)...why not "vanity vinyl"?

(Ooh, that's a good name...but for what? An album? A record store? A stripper? )

A recording made with a device centered around guitar amp modeling and effects processing called the "Fractal Audio Axe-FX II." Some of you in the guitar scene may be familiar with it.

The "vinyl" sound made in the first portion is all coming from that machine. It's not as complex or as variable as a real vinyl record sound perhaps (i.e., the pops and clicks are not randomized, as dust in grooves would be), but judge for yourself whether or not it achieves a suitable "old timey" effect.

Looks cute but does it also add off-center 'wow' and inter-channel phase 'wobbles' and will it simulate tracing distortion? I do NOT miss vinyl. When it was all we had it was OK because the alternative was nothing.

It would probably run you a few hundred dollars just to get a test pressing of one record, but hey, there have been plenty of vanity songs/albums made over the years (Rebecca Black's "Friday" being one of the most (in)famous, certainly as of late)...why not "vanity vinyl"?

OK, this might be too expensive for me, but the idea digs deeper. I was discussing this with some friends, we were talking about the current hipsterism craze. The idea is to have vinyl versions of whatever podcast from the internet pressed on vinyl, and sell that to hipsters. Granted, the idea came up, after around four liters of beer and a pizza for everyone, but still, the idea shouldn't be that bad. However, since cutting vinyls is so expensive, it might be the nail on it.

I believe, that what she's referring to, is the romantic value to playing records. The clicks and pops of the record, actually adds to the experience of listening to records.

Digital music (no matter what physical media it is on), is clean and sterile. I believe this is why she claims that vinyl sounds "better" (except if they're encoded badly. Then, they're just digital junk).

I's like saying a printed book is "better" than eBooks. The advocacy for Vinyl is quite similar to that of reel-to-reel tape. I'd even argue, that the open reel advocacy is even more militaristic, since it is of audiophile, high quality and doesn't introduce the clicks and pops of vinyl. At the same time, the machinery looked awesome, with large tape wheels spinning on the machine.I like vinyl as well. But I'd never claim we should go back to them.

It's like having a vintage motorcycle in the garage that you take for a ride on a nice Sunday.

I was spellbound by this thread. I still have LPs, cassettes, 45's and open reels ranging from hundreds to thousands for each category. Before digital came along, I swore up and down that LPs were the best of the breed and my reels sounded fabulous. It did take me a while to get used to CD's when they first arrived. Being in the music business, I still remember, like yesterday, when PolyGram unveiled the new John Cougar album on CD at a listening session in 1983. The next month, I won my first CD player, a single-play Sony model, from CBS Records. The rest is history!

Today, I hardly play any LP that is available on CD because, in contrast to her, I despise pops and clicks! Be that as it may, I still go back to my vinyl or open reels when the song or album is not available anywhere in any format. And, I have a LOT of rare material. In those cases, I digitize the songs and live with the pops and clicks...just too lazy to process them out. I really hated cassettes because of the ubiquitous hiss but they were portable. What else could I use in the car? If I turned on noise reduction, despite what Dolby said, I could hear the high frequencies being chopped off. (Before that, 8-tracks didn't get any points form me, either. I mean, who would want a song fading off in the middle just so the track could change?!) Something was missing. So, I played my cassettes with no NR but equalized the hiss as much as possible. Of course, using CRO2 tapes were costly and economically prohibitive. Open reels were right behind vinyl, but I had that annoying hiss even if I recorded at 15 IPS. So, I was ecstatic when digital came along. I can also imagine the ecstasy radio stations felt when digital came along. Working in radio, I found the wow on the odd startup and cueing up records, etc. very laborious and mundane. CD's changed all that.

Today, there is no need to fast forward or rewind with instant access to any portion of the song or painless repeats. Hiss is hisstory! Portability is out of this world! Songs can be emailed to and from distant shores in seconds! No need to physically handle media anymore. No cleaning with multiple brushes or annoying static. No degradation of sound quality when copied. No misplacing the stylus off the outer edge of the record. I still feel romantic looking and handling records thinking of the Good Old Days. But, they remain in my library as beloved icons of an era when they served their purpose VERY well. Long love vinyl. But, I'll defer to digital.

Oh, I still love listening to my reel-ro-reel machine and dig watching those reels roll.

I still feel romantic looking and handling records thinking of the Good Old Days.

A Japanese company sells CDs that are miniature reproductions of the original LPs. But the real hipster marketing play would be to sell mockups of LPs together with the digital version. You'd read the sleeve, handle the disk with a fake groove, and think about the Good Old Days whilst listening to proper reproduction. And your collection could once more take up major wall-space.

Surely, if they were really good, they could make a real ‘dualdisc’: ordinary CD on one side, cut groove on the other!

I have a select few vinyls by a couple of my favourite bands, mainly for collectibility’s sake and, I guess, to support the label that released them as both it and the bands (the latter now defunct) are not exactly overflowing with money. Who’s to say that some day down the line, I won’t feel an irresistible urge to rip them open and throw a needle on them? But I think they’ll remain in the cupboard for a while yet.